Last night, after a one-week hiatus from this storyline, during which we explored a traumatic event from Louie’s childhood, Louie, who pressed his physical attentions on his would-be girlfriend Pamela (Pamela Adlon), ends up getting the girl. That’s right, the woman who two weeks ago cried, “This would be rape if you weren’t so stupid,” ended the season lovingly embracing Louie in a candlelit bathtub. No repercussions? No fallout? What on Earth are we supposed to take away from that?

The real answer comes not in Louie and Pamela’s highly dysfunctional relationship, but in the strange and surreal art exhibit where the two have their first official date. In it, we see all manner of provocative exhibits, including one labeled “bag of shit,” one labeled “the Jews,” and, most importantly, one that literally pushes buttons. Despite Pamela’s objections, C.K. presses a button on the exhibit and the word “nigger” booms out of a speaker.

Later, Pamela and Louie are confronted with a pile of corpse-like bodies that must, in the context of this fictional universe, surely recall the carnage of Hurricane Jasmine Forsythe, which destroyed much of Florida and New York. (R.I.P. LeBron James.) As a violent crescendo of string music plays, Louie and Pamela look at the exhibit with a mixture of shock, horror, and outrage . . .

. . . only to very quickly recover and move on to the next phase of the date.

Their fleeting reaction is the perfect metaphor for today’s fleeting pop-culture rage cycle, where every week, day, hour there is something new to provoke and offend us. But how long does that offense stick? It was clever of C.K. to put last week’s two-parter smack dab in the middle of Pamela’s story. Two weeks is plenty of time for the typical Internet-fueled outrage to evaporate; at least 10 new “offensive” events have happened in the interim, giving those of us wringing our hands about Louie’s sexual assault enough time to almost forget about it entirely. As Louie and Pamela fail to grapple at all with the art exhibit’s horror, the show itself becomes a scathing indictment of our short attention spans. (Whither thou, Game of Thrones rape scandal?)

And in this case, as creator, writer, director, and star, C.K. isn't just the button-pusher; he’s the one who put the button there in the first place. The button he’s pushing in the particular episode is tied to our tendency as pop-culture consumers toward volatile, knee-jerk reactions. But he's inserted a series of buttons throughout the season, addressing violence against women, speaking the unspoken when it comes to being overweight, and, most recently, sexual violence within relationships. Looking at the season as a whole, the agenda isn’t just tackling tough topics helter skelter, but grappling with those specifically tied to gender. This season, instead of his typical exploration of the ennui of the modern male, C.K. took up the banner of women.

The show addressed body-image issues and exposed double standards. It explored the struggles of too-bright young women through Louie’s youngest daughter, Jane (played exquisitely by Ursula Parker), and the plight of becoming a helpless older woman through Louie’s elevator-entrapped neighbor, Evanka (the equally exquisite Ellen Burstyn). We got women who couldn’t speak for themselves (Amia) and women who were incapable of shutting up (Pamela). And Louie even managed a pragmatic kind of sympathy for the character of his ex-wife, Janet (Susan Kelechi Watson), when, in real life, Louis C.K. has come under fire, via the outrage cycle, for ungenerous comments he made toward his former spouse.

You could argue, if you were so inclined, that this season has been as much about gender roles as a whole as it has been about women. In the last night’s two-parter, Louis is put in a stereotypically feminine role, grappling with body insecurity and begging his partner for more commitment, affection, and tenderness; the ever-abrasive and withholding Pamela, meanwhile, plays the part usually allotted to males. This makes a brilliant companion piece to last week’s “Into the Woods” two-parter which featured, courtesy of Jeremy Renner’s drug-dealer character, some toxic lessons on masculinity and a “man‘s game having a man’s price.”

Whether or not he successfully tackled outdated gender roles, it’s undeniable that C.K., who has built his career on espousing his world view, tried to see the world from another perspective this season. In the process, he managed to kick up several conversations around gender, maybe even more than other more overtly feminist shows like Girls or Broad City. If he pushed buttons along the way, it was only to get your attention. Now how long can he hold it before the next outrage cycle begins?